illiam
L Winans was involved in railroad work at the Alexandrovsky plant in St. Petersburg.
According to Vladimir V.
Noskov124, the plant was equipped for ship construction and
there were earlier experiments at
Alexandrovsky with
a spindle-shaped "secret boat" before Winans came to Russia126.
During the Crimean War (1853-56),
he helped equip gunboats to
defend St. Petersburg125. However, he was
unsuccessful in raising Russian interest in the cigar boats until he emphasized
their military potential, offering Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich,
general-admiral of the Russian navy, "a cigar-shaped ironclad that
would serve as 'a steadier gun platform' "45.
Until this time the Winans had been promoting the cigar ships for civilian
use. Winans gave Nikolaevich photos and and other material about the
Baltimore steamer and a small copper "bath tub" model. The
Grand Duke was impressed and appointed two commissions, one to assess the
performance of the boat and the other to test the vulnerability of the
armor45,135.The prototype Russian boat was built with a more conventional propeller aft under a shield of armor plate (compared to the the large mid-hull propeller of the Baltimore steamer)45 and tested on the Neva on the 1st and 2nd of November 1861128. It travelled to Kronstadt on the 7th, and underwent apparently unimpressive trials on the Gulf of Finland on the 8th129. Winans himself, in his December 1861 letter to Cassius Marcellus Clay, then United States Minister to Russia, describes a war boat 84½ feet long and eight feet in diameter with a single underwater propeller, built that summer. Characteristic of the Winans promotional attitude, he describes tests with the boat as "most successful ... except some difficulty about her steering, when the vessel was moving diagonally across the waves". He ascribes this "principally from the rudder being very small for the sized vessel", proportionally less than half that for the Baltimore steamer. He states that he has ordered changes to be made to the rudder and the addition of a "sliding keel" to see if this "might be advantageous"80. Per Jacob W. Kipp, the maneuverability of the prototype presented at Kronstadt did not meet expectations, but its shape successfully and impressively deflected cannon fire. According to William Winans80, the cannon testing was against a specially built target rather than the boat itself. The Naval Scientific Committee approved Winans' approach129,130 but the Shipbuilding Technical Committee, in light of observations in the trials, was not in favor131.** Winans was certain of final success124.
According to correspondence from F.M. Novosel'skii132, with concerns about conflict between Russia and England and France during the Polish Crisis of 1863, the Russian cigar boat was put on the English steamboat Nautilus that left Kronstadt 20 May 1863 (Novosel'skii's letter is dated five days before the departure). I have been unable to find anything about this steamboat or its cargo, so the fate of the Russian prototype remains unknown.
Winans had presented his proposal for a fleet of gunboats during the summer of 186157. The Russians asked for modifications to the design, "notably the cutting off of the top of the circular hull to lower the center of gravity and create a deck for the vessel"133,136. According to Kipp45, Winans constructed "an ironclad cigar boat at St. Petersburg" to these specifications although various delays prevented sea trials until 1865133. The sea trials were apparently unimpressive and the Russians lost interest turning to monitor-style ironclad gunboats45, as on show for Gustavus Fox's 1866 arrival in Kronstadt134.
In John H. B. Latrobe and His Times, 1803-189183, published in 1917, John Semmes mentions at least two Russian boats: “William Louis Winans, during his stay in Russia , built two vessels of the Cigar boat character (which were in fact submarines [!]*) for the Russian Government, for use in the Crimean war. Mr. Winans also built several monitors for the Russian Government – boats that were sunk very low in the water with turtle armored backs, so that the round shot used in those days would bound off the deck of the boat. He also armed them with guns on disappearing carriages. They were built prior to Ericson’s [sic] monitors.” The two vessels might be the prototype and the ironclad mentioned by Kipp. The monitors are probably the Crimean War gunboats but appear to be confused by Semmes with the proposal gunboats.
* Monitors and other boats with very low freeboard often operated with their decks awash, especially if the sea was at all high. This may account for Semmes' "submarine" statement.
** Expanding on the committee's finding and William
Winans' response:
A short 1863 Russian Maritime Journal Morskoi
sbornik article, "Опыты
над лодкоиу
Ваинанса в
виде сигары"
(Experiments on the Winans boat in the form of a cigar)131,
under the heading "During
1862 the following proposals were considered," reports that
the test results were unexpectedly not favorable. The findings were
that the form would be unsuitable for warships because it did not provide
the necessary speed, without significant changes inconsistent with the its
size and seaworthiness. Winans countered that his calculations were
accurate and that his experience with spindle-shaped craft supported his
contention that the form was superior to all others for both cargo
transportation and military operations. He stated he could
"build a vessel of suitable size for ocean sailing ... [that] would practically
eliminate all doubts".
(Source references are in the bibliography on the main cigar ships page.)
This is the extent of the information I've
uncovered to date on the Russian boats actually built. See my page
on the gunboat proposals, accessible from the Cigar Boat page, for material
related to the ironclads and monitors mentioned above. As always I'm
very interested in any additional information.
